This article is taken from the December-January 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
There’s a new dinner party conversation which goes like this: “You remember Zach/Zara? He/she got a 2.1 in classical civilisation/English lit from Exeter/Oxford Brookes, then did a season in Chamonix/the BVI, and since returning has now applied for 300 jobs and got zero interviews. I can’t understand it — they’re such a great chap/lovely girl.”
There follows self-flagellation as the parent blames themselves for scrimping on science tutors or failing to keep up with cousin Seb, who is a director of a private bank with a nepo hiring policy.
Then there might even be tears over the cheese and Bendicks amidst contemplation of the final curtain on a dynasty that goes back to the Nabobs, Huguenots or occasionally the Norman Conquest. It’s certainly a bleak time for well-brought-up youngsters who lack the grey matter to join the cognitive elite.
The annual number of graduate vacancies has crashed from 180,000 after the pandemic to a projected 50,000 for 2025. “It’s a jobs drought,” James Reed, the chairman of recruiters Reed Employment, told The Times recently, “more of a desert actually.”
His suggestion to struggling grads: “Think about a job that involves working with your hands.” With advice like that, it’s tempting to panic and dispatch Zach to become a plumber’s apprentice or Zara to the Cordon Bleu school.
But, as they say, it is always darkest before the dawn and I am quietly confident that, for the Great Chaps and Lovely Girls, their times will come again.
OK, so in the corporate head offices I frequent, it’s painfully clear that, right now, the blinky northern chemists have the upper hand. Every meeting room seems to be block-booked by management consultants with the digital screen outside ominously proclaiming: “confidential project”.
What’s happening in my businesses and many Western multinationals is the mother of all time and motion studies. The consultancies are hoovering up introverted STEM-types to participate in the great project of our age: the categorisation of every role undertaken in corporate life to determine whether it should be retained, automated with artificial intelligence “agents” or off-shored to Asia.
The Indian call centre is, of course, a well-established phenomenon and even a source of some affection, thanks to the Dickensian sentimentality of Slumdog Millionaire. But what’s happening now goes way beyond customer service and IT help desks.
Entire categories of jobs which have been the traditional entry-points for middling British graduates are disappearing: HR associates, procurement managers, graphic designers, team secretaries, the list goes on and on.
As long as customers remain in Britain there will be a need for salespeople based here to woo them
It’s grim and unsettling. But it’s a force of history that can’t be stopped any more than our ancestors could prevent the demise of the three-field system or the Lancashire cotton mills.
That said, not too long from now, the inferno of white-collar life will have run its course, and it will be time for the Great Chaps and Lovely Girls to emerge from their bunkers and reclaim the earth. The jobs that remain will be ideally suited to their core skills. As long as customers remain in Britain there will be a need for salespeople based here to woo them.
A firm handshake and competitive spirit borne from winters racing down icy black runs will, I have no doubt, still be the qualities sought by employers.
Whilst most administrative roles will have been axed, an important place will remain for the type of executive assistant who can enhance the authority of their bosses with clipped vowels and a stern sideways look.
The growing sclerosis of our state is another opportunity for our very own Gen Zs. Our capricious and ever-changing taxation system is leading to a growing demand for face-to-face financial advice. And, although the firms never admit it, clients prefer to speak to an adviser with a reassuringly prosperous background.
Similarly, the growing complexity of property regulation, highlighted by the Rachel Reeves’s landlord licence debacle, may herald a renaissance for that epitome of Great Chap roles — the Savills letting agent.
Of course, there will be no need to fret about having zoned out in school coding lessons. In the bright future of agentic AI, the only tech skill you’ll need is the ability to instruct your computer what to do in a voice that’s loud, slow and authoritative.
And that’s an ability best acquired through ordering trays of Jägerbombs in crowded French apres-ski bars.
